I stood there, gaping open-mouthed like an idiot, when I remembered after buying an iPhone that one of the reasons I’d postponed my purchase in the first place was because it had no task list. After a moment, I picked my jaw up off the floor and stroked the screen on my tiny new toy. This was an opportunity in disguise.

I had been somewhat overwhelmed lately and looking at implementing the Zen-To-Done idea of transferring just my most important tasks (MITs) to an index card or something. Well, I still don’t much like paper and pen, so I just put my MITs in an iPhone Note. Voila, problem solved. My three most important things to do are transferred every night from Entourage to iPhone Notes, and so far it’s a not-bad solution.

I do dislike having to replicate activities, like typing the tasks in another place, and then deleting them back in Entourage at the end of the day, but in a way this could be good: I’m forcing myself to evaluate my priorities every day, and I’m not piling too much on myself. Having that added step of retyping information is a nice barrier toward adding too much to my list. :)

I’ve found over the years I too, was getting overwhelmed with long task lists. Then I decided to try just using the calendar. For short tasks, I just use a block of 15 minutes. So if it only takes 5 minutes, I’ve got 10 left to breathe. :) I try to schedule these ‘calendar tasks’ as close to how long I think they’ll take to complete. I try my best not to let them overlap. This way, I’ve got my time carved out and I get a better overall look at how my day’s going to go.I obviously can’t create more time for myself, so now I only use what I have.

It just seemed to get too tough redating all the unimportant stuff I never got around to doing in my task list.

Now I’m less stressed. Well, a little at least. :)

-Marc

I find that I don’t need the to do list on my iPhone, as I usually work with the laptop nearby at all times. However, I found that using the iPhone to capture by sending an email to my Apple Mail account has been great, especially since typing “- -” in the subject line automatically sends the tasks to the inbox on my Omnifocus. I don’t imagine the ninjas over at Omni are going to make us wait to long for the iPhone app anyway …

I have found the perfect application for my To-Do list needs:

www.iwantsandy.com

It works with iCal and with my iPhone. She’s always there to remind me of what I have to do, whether it’s a task a month from now or simply something I need to remember an hour from now. She also gives me a list every morning, waiting in my Inbox (or also via SMS if I want), of the day’s tasks.

Perfect!

Have you tried the web interface for OmniFocus? It’s imperfect but it shows promise. I can access OmniFocus from the iPhone while out of the office, and it works very well, especially for errands. As an example, I was near Costco one day last week, remembered I needed to pick up some items. I went in, took out the iPhone, got my Errands:Costco context, and proceeded to check off the items on my list. Not having to go home for the list, wing it or call my wife for suggestions was perfect.

And the thing is, I do this all the time now.

There are only a few contexts that make sense when using the phone (errands, calls). The web interface is limited to checking off actions and adding items to the Inbox, but it shows great promise. For me, OmniFocus is the missing iPhone To-Do app. OmniFocus in the cloud!

Thanks for this insightful post. The way you shifted your view to “with kid” or “without kid” is a great example of how havin a kid is just not the same as not having one. Sometimes I have to look at how neat and organized I like my actions to be categorized, and how nicely linear I prefer my schedule to be, and just laugh as I know that much of that will be impossible when I have kids.

Great post. Need more like it…